Back From Buffalo Carmel

[VeniteAdoremus]

[quote name='InHisLove726' post='1895865' date='Jun 19 2009, 02:46 PM']That's an incredible thought! I love the kaleidoscope analogy! We, as Catholics, have so many flavors of spirituality, all tied in to one final goal--Jesus Christ. [/quote]

It was a really important realisation for me, because I have always had trouble connecting to other peoples' feelings and inner lives (not only in the religious sense).

My sister was like my example in the spiritual life. I tried out a lot of her practices* to see how they "fit" me, and they often did, remarkably well - but at the same time her underlying spirituality, her "Benedictine-ness", was something I couldn't understand [i]at all[/i].

Since everything she does flows from that in some way, I felt a bit like a tree without roots, or even a bunch of branches without a connecting trunk. I associated the practices with the Benedictine-ness and as that is not my charism, I couldn't see how you could really "reach the end" with them, even though they "felt good". Mass was Mass, a rosary was a rosary, LotH was LotH, but it didn't slot into my life as a whole.

Then I [url="http://www.domcentral.org/trad/domspirit/default.htm"]found the Dominican spirituality[/url] and in a couple of months every activity with the "religion" tag became a building block towards [i]something[/i] - finding my vocation, finding God, dying to self, whatever - they're the same in the end, aren't they? The connection was there.

When I got that, I could suddenly understand much better how the Benedictine spirituality works (literally, haha), because it was just looking at the same connected dots from a different angle.

And now I "get" the Carmelites too because In the Arms of the Lord kindly provided me with the "angle" I will never experience how it fills her spiritual life exactly, but I can see how it is connected to mine. That makes it real, living, to me.

So THANK YOU HOLY SPIRIT for whacking me upside the head until I got it (it wasn't a very [i]subtle[/i] process)

This doesn't mean, by the way, that I have even the faintest clue about what life, religion, or Dominicanness is all about I'm just far enough along to see that there's SO MUCH MORE!

*and her clothes, books, and monasteries